


Trauma in Two Parts

by writeside



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Aromantic Characters, Asexual Characters, Childhood Sexual Trauma, Childhood Trauma, Discussion of Ableism, Gen, Incest, Transgender Characters, autistic characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeside/pseuds/writeside
Summary: She is 7 and her brother is 9. He starts peeking into her room when she is getting changed. She tells her mother and her mother tells her to close her door. She closes her door.A story of the events of Musichetta's childhood trauma and the aftermath of trying to label their experiences.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ironically, I had trouble tagging this  
> Please please let me know if you feel adding any additional warnings or tags would be necessary.
> 
> please comment if you're able to, writing this was difficult and I'd really like some feedback :)

She is 17 and lying in bed with Bossuet and Joly, who will one day become her partners. But they aren’t yet, the three of them are nearly strangers. Drunk strangers, lying in bed together. Bossuet and Joly are horny, and one second Musichetta is laughing with them and the next Bossuet and Joly are kissing. 

They break often to ask her if she is okay, if she feels left out, if this is okay, if she is comfortable. And she’s not, not really, she’s remembering lying next to _him_ , feeling trapped and fragile, but this is nothing like that because they are talking to her and interested in each other, not her. 

She tells them it is alright and they keep kissing in bed next to her.

  

She is 7 and her brother is 9. He starts peeking into her room when she is getting changed. She tells her mother and her mother tells her to close her door.

She closes her door.

 

She is 17 and memories of _him_ have been playing on repeat in her head for a week. She has heard the _noise_ so many times now she can’t imagine her memory is anything like reality anymore. She doubts all her memories now. They’ve replayed too much, they have to have edited themselves at some point, they can’t possibly be true anymore. 

But over and over in her head is _him_ , lying in bed next to her. 

 

She is 8 and her brother is still 9. He makes a show of lying under her when she wears skirts. Her mother catches him one time and rolls her eyes and asks him to stop being immature. He does not stop and their mother simply rolls her eyes again. Musichetta stops wearing skirts. 

 

She is 17 and she has a new and close friend named Grantaire. She has known him as long as she has known Bossuet and Joly, which is to say she met him the first week of college and hit it off. She walks to class with Grantaire and tells him about lying in bed next to Bossuet and Joly while they kiss. He laughs and makes a joke about that being sexy. 

She does not laugh back. She says “He never touched me but sometimes I wish he did, just to make things easier to box, you know?”

Grantaire does not understand what she is saying but he knows that neither Bossuet nor Joly uses he/him pronouns and that seems to be enough of a hint for him to stop and just give her a few seconds of space. 

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“I just wish I had a label for it,” Chetta admits. “Because it wasn’t rape, it wasn’t any kind of sexual assault. He never touched me. But it was…it was _something_. And more than anything I wish I had a label for it.” 

Grantaire, in the dark, cannot provide one. 

 

She is 8 when her brother hangs a pair of her underwear from all four posts of her bed. Her mother is in the room when Musichetta notices and for a second she is so horrified she feels encased in ice. Her mother can’t notice, she’ll force Musichetta to explain and Chetta will have to talk about it. Her mother leaves and Musichetta quickly tears the underwear down. She understands the message, that he has been in her underwear drawer and he is not afraid of showing that. 

Her bed no longer feels safe. 

 

She is 18 - her first day as and 18 year old - and she finally talks to Bossuet and Joly about the night they kissed next to her. 

“It fucked me up for like a solid week,” she says. “I think it was the _noise_.”

“It was fucked up, we were drunk, we shouldn’t have done it,” Bossuet says.

“It felt good but it was a mistake,” Joly says.

“This isn’t about you,” Chetta says. “This isn’t even about me. This is about my brother and how I think he fucked me up.”

It’s the first time she’s admitted that. It took a lot from her but it doesn’t make her feel powerful in return like she hope it would. Instead she just feels broken and small. 

 

She is 9 and laying on a couch in the basement when her brother walks over with his dick out. She doesn’t see him at first, then looks over and suddenly there is a dick at her eye level. She had never seen a penis before then and wished she hadn’t seen that one. She flinches away and every movement suddenly feels like a life or death choice.

She asks him why _it’s_ out. He grins and says he thought she’d like it. She says _no_ and asks him to put it away. 

He is still grinning like he’s won, like her being visibly terrified is enough for him (and later she will understand that he was hard the whole time, but she doesn't know what that is yet) but in that moment he just _grins_ and says okay and walks away.

And that is enough of a win for that day. 

 

She is 18 when she learns what autism is beyond some idea that its bad and old classmates had it. She reads the diagnosis criteria and it feels almost like something fits, but also like someone is shining a flashlight onto all her worst parts. She hates it, hates it, hates every list of symptoms she finds. 

Because these are all _his_ symptoms. This is everything she associates with _him_ , and that’s why she hates it in herself so much. 

She wonders if all the ‘no’s she thought she screamed so loudly were invisible to him.

She wonders if no one ever told him to draw a line between his sister and other women, if no one taught him to see lines women drew. She wonders if this is actually a case of an autistic man abandoned without assistance. 

She doesn’t care if its wrong or ableist or unhealthy. She still hates him. 

 

She is 12 and has only had scattered periods. Her last one was many months ago. Her mother thinks this means she is pregnant and Musichetta spends a month dreaming that her brother comes into her room and rapes her at night. She closes her door, leaves clues to tell if someone has been inside, goes to doctors with her mother to check if she is pregnant or not.

She is not.

 

She’s 19 and sick of giving her identity to him. 

No.

They are 19 and they are non binary and that is not _his_. 

(It feels like his. Would they still be feeling this dysphoria without him?)

 

She is 14 and her brother is 16 and has a license now and drives her to and from school. In the morning he plays a talk show where they laugh about sex and on the way home he talks to her about sex, and her opinions on sex, and she acts like she is cool and older and unbothered by this and says things like ‘it’s not a big deal’ and ‘I think girls who talk about sex are cool’ and acts like she is a cool girl who is willing to talk about sex.

Her brother grins the whole time. 

 

They are 19 and Grantaire says “I’ve heard of that,” and says “There’s a word for that, I’ve heard of that.”

They swallow because of course they’ve looked this up, they know the word as well.

“Lithromanticism,” Chetta says. “Experiencing romantic attraction, but losing it when it’s returned.”

“Yeah, lithromanticism. See? If there’s a word then you aren’t alone.”

“Yeah,” Chetta says, because they honestly do love having words for themself. What they don’t have words for is the sickness the identity leaves in their core. 

It feels like _he’s_ stolen more from them. Like he’s frightened them away from anyone being attracted to them ever.

 

She is 15 and she wears a shirt with words across her breasts. She has giant breasts, big enough to get in the way of everything, and her shirt is stretched to its seams to accommodate them and the word are bent out of shape. When her brother sees her he suddenly looks vacant, completely in a trance. He reaches out, seemingly without even thinking, and taps at her left boob, watching it fold around his finger. She smacks his hand out of the way and marches upstairs to get changed.

She throws the shirt away and starts wearing baggy shirts. 

She is no longer interested in being a cool girl, she has started telling anyone who asks that she thinks sex is disgusting. 

 

They are 20 and dating Bossuet and Joly and they know their partners sleep together but they are not interested. They are not interested in sex, have never had the urge to have it. They find words for this - asexual, ace - and that’s beautiful and they are so happy. They buy two black rings and wear one on either middle finger as a show of ace pride. 

They are 20 and wonder if he fucked them up and if they wouldn’t be ace if it weren’t for him. If his noises and interest didn’t just turn them _off_ when they were too little and now they can never be turned _on_. 

 

She is 15 and she notices that when she bends over her brother watches. Sometimes his phone is out and he looks like he is taking a picture.

She does everything to avoid standing, walking, and bending in front of him.

 

They are 21 and drunk and sobbing into their friend Enjolras’ shoulder. Enjolras is asexual and aromantic and agender and autistic and absolutely wonderful, going to change the world. Musichetta loves em so much and respects em so so much, and feels safe and drunk in eir arms. 

“I think he was abusive,” they sob, “I think he was really super abusive. I know he’s fucked up, I know it was all kinds of fucked. I mean, I have a little brother, and he’s so tiny, you know? He’s taller than me now and he’s in middle school, and that means if I was gonna abuse him I’d have to have already gotten started a few years ago, you know? Like, a lot of years ago, and he’s still just so little, and he was even littler then, so so tiny, and that’s just wrong? I was so tiny, so little, I was just a baby really, I was just so tiny. It’s not fair, we were both too young to be fucked up like that, I didn’t deserve it I didn’t, I was so young, my little brother is so small I can’t imagine hurting him why did my older sibling not feel the same way? He really fucked me up, you know? He really fucked me up.”

Musichetta lets out another sob. 

“He abused me. I’m really fucked up about it.”

 

 She is 16 and he has a girlfriend also named _Musichetta_ who reminds him of his sister in every way and where did he even find someone else named _Musichetta_?

 

They are still 21 the next morning. They feel freed with the memory of labeling him abusive and telling Enjolras. 

It’s a label, for all it doesn’t feel specific enough. 

 

She is 16 and he is masturbating on the bed next to her. Her phone refuses to connect long enough for her to send distracting texts to friends and she is certain that if she moves he will _notice her remember she’s there attack her something something it will be bad_. It lasts for a year, probably. Maybe longer. She is frozen the whole time while he makes sloppy slapping noises beside her.

They were on a family vacation, supposed to share a bed for just one night in a rotation of three beds between five people.

It was supposed to be safe for one night. 

 

They are 22 and graduating college. And they will never live with him again. And there are people in their life who support them.

And that is a win for this day.


End file.
